The Archive

Bolton's final day defeat was enough to hand Forest promotion and set them on their way to their first league championship, writes Geoff Wallis

The long-term significance
Ian Greaves’ Bolton narrowly missed out on promotion for the second season running, this time on the last day. Third-placed Forest learnt of Bolton’s defeat to Wolves as their holiday-bound plane landed in Palma, Mallorca. Within the next two years Brian Clough and Peter Taylor’s team would win the League championship for the first (and probably only) time, win the League Cup twice and become European champions. Bolton finally went up in 1978.

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Will Ferrell's back, and Helen Duff takes a look at his latest effort, Kicking & Screaming

Imagine if film genres were ranked, according to goodness, as football divisions. Allowing for the fact that mafia sagas and Vietnam epics would probably be tussling for Champions League spots – and that anything with Billy Crystal in it would be propping up League Two – American “soccer” movies would be groping for credibility within the Sheffield and Hallamshire Girls County League.

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After another incident-packed transfer window, is there any shred of club loyalty left?

If Chelsea were going to make Lyon an offer for Michael Essien they couldn’t refuse, you would think they could have hurried up about it a bit. Far too much newsprint was expended on a depressingly inevitable saga. Lyon’s point of view – that if they were going to lose their best player to a team with a bottomless pit of cash then they would take every rouble they could get – was understandable. Essien, too, cannot be blamed for wanting more money than he could dream of

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Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but Simon Tyers isn't too impressed with the coverage copycats

As usual, it’s Sky’s fault. Not for everything, of course, but as soon as they come up with a new way of approaching football coverage it gets copied by the terrestrial channels using a heavily smudged blueprint. They bring us Andy Gray and his computers, eventually we get the Tactics Truck. They invent the top-corner screen display, Five run with one that seems at times to take up a quarter of the screen.

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Tuesday 2 “Pride, sadness, injustice – they are all rolled in there,” says Gordon as Celtic beat Artmedia 4‑0 in the second leg of their Champions League tie. Liverpool complete a 5‑1 aggregate victory over Kaunas. Joey Barton makes a public appeal to his missing stepbrother, whom police want to question regarding the murder of black teenager Michael Walker in Liverpool. Milan Baros won’t be moving to Schalke, whose general manager says: “We could only justify the move if we were guaranteed to play in the Champions League for the next three seasons.” Andy Johnson won’t be moving anywhere, for a few months at least, after signing a five-year deal with Palace, with no help from his agent, who has been banned from the club. Michael Owen concedes that his advisors have been in contact with several Premiership clubs, but adds: “I am confident that Real Madrid will have my best interests at heart whatever happens.”

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